Splash

Ah. Good tip. I can make believe it's a smudge on the periscope optics, but it's hard to ignore from the hatch of the M60. Also, fwiw, the issue shows up in the 3D world of the mission building/planning phase as well.

Well, I thought I did. Squint harder.

OK. I couldn't resist tinkering with it some more.

And I didn't see this mentioned specifically elsewhere, so I'll mention it here ... The same issue presents in the TC periscope of the Leo 2 series.

Reported here:

To restate and expand on what Gibsonm was getting at: It appears from your description that you have placed your desired skin in the mods/textures/woodland folder. But that folder also contains 36 subdirectories for the choosable nationalities, does it not? If you want your skin to appear when US 1990 is chosen as your army's camoflage, you must place the skin in the "us" subdirectory folder. At the risk of getting too complicated: The mod woodland, winter, desert and autumn folders don't seem to function globally in the same manner as the main game folders (the ones on your D: drive). In most cases (I won't get into apparent exceptions) the game doesn't see .dds files placed outside of the nation folders in the mod woodland, winter, desert or autumn folders. If there's no skin for a vehicle in the nation's mod folder, the game looks elsewhere, bypassing the mod season folder. It's a complicated thing to explain. But if you do as directed above: place your skin in the "us" folder within the "woodland" folder within the "textures" folder of your "mods" directory ... AND select "US 1990" for the party you're modding on a WOODLAND-themed map -- it will work. Trust me. When painting a skin I go through these steps a gazillion times. So let it be written; so let it be done: Skin in the country folder of the season matching the mission; same country assigned to the party in the mission. If it still does not appear to work, start the mission. I've found (not so much with 4.0) sometimes the change doesn't seem to 'take' in the 3-D planning/building view.

By the way, re-reading this I see it comes off as a bit harsh. I meant to say it was buggy and a can of worms to explain. But I just got a look at the 4.004 release notes (and confirmed in game) that the issue with vehicle crews was fixed at the last minute. So ignore that.

Hey, don't let that stop you. The more choices the merrier. You might have a different color interpretation or find something I missed. RogueSnake's template is awesome, but way outta my league. I puzzled over it quite a bit and had to do some workarounds because Gimp doesn't seem to read all the layer effects.

CN uses the interceptordress infantry model. KP uses the new Uniform1970 RU. So you can't do a straight skin swap. Simplest workaround would be to (at least temporarily) put your desired Chinese vehicle skins in the KP mod folder and select KP for the look of the party playing PLA. That party would then have Chinese vehicle skins and North Korean infantry skins. (Except in the case of vehicle crews ... which is a buggy bag of worms, so I won't get into that.)

On the ASLAV PC

A shadow image of the F8 view projects itself from the TC's hatch. Only thing that seems to get rid of it is turning shadows to 0.

All of the M113 specialty vehicles (FO, engineer, TOW, etc) use the Danish M113G3 model ... yet there are no alternative skins provided for the G3. That would be fine except that mission makers seem to favor the M113 as the vehicle of choice for those roles, and often those missions feature forces other than DK. I like to keep my forces homogeneous, within reason, so I worked up some skins using RogueSnake79's template for the great new M113 model, so it doesn't look lonely when I'm not playing as Denmark. One is Auscam to proxy in those roles for Australian forces. It looks right at home with the game's M113AS4. Another is basic NATO camo for U.S. (and other allied forces). It's almost a twin to the M113A3. And there are two German skins, one in the NATO-style camo (matches the Leo 2s) and one in the single-color scheme (works with the earlier Leo 1s and 113A2G). All should be available soon for download.

Good to know. I'll shelve this project again for now.

The MultiCam skin has been available for download for a few years now (with a couple of updates). I just provided the pic for comparison with the newer camo under present game lighting. I should have pointed out, though, top pic is OCP; bottom is MultiCam.

You down with OCP? I started this project awhile back then shelved it because, (a) The U.S. military has been particularly fickle of late on camo patterns, and (b) to my eye, at least, there's precious little difference between it and the MultiCam I had already done. But I rediscovered my swatch while doing another project, so here it is. Any suggestions (or interest, for that matter)? I went with a Coyote Brown body armor because I read somewhere that was the plan for issue. And I kind of like the look. But I've also seen some photos of green gear. Are they doing accouterments in the new pattern? That would be easy enough to work up. I'm not keen on trying to paint a more modern type of armor, because the sim's modeling still comes through. Anyway ... discuss. Some pics with 4.0 graphics and lighting.

"New head tracking mode 'TrackIR (alt)': Here the CDR's unbuttoned view direction will be relative to the turret, not relative to the hull." You gentlemen are princes among men. Thank you for returning this feature (and for making it an option so those inclined to motion sickness can still use their TrackIR.) Bully.

'sOK. Might make for some interesting teaching moments in the meantime. (wave of hand) ... These are not the opfor you're looking for.

No, the issue is party-related. For BLUE, every one of the 36 nationalities draws from its own skin folder for the models in crew positions. A mission designer would expect all of the other parties to work the same. Not so much. The problem, I have discovered, is that ALL of the other parties -- Red, Breen, Purple, Brown, etc. -- attempt to draw their crew skins from BLUE. If the party uses the same troop model as BLUE it will take the same skin BLUE is using. If the party uses a different troop model than BLUE, (there are six infantry and three tanker models), it will look next to the textures/camo/default folder for its crew skin -- bypassing the nation folder, where it should be getting the skin. Again, everything works just dandy for BLUE. But other parties, while correctly drawing the "base appearance" model in the crew positions, draw 'default' skins. From the test mission attached, This is what I see: BLUE: Set to UN. Uses the Russian_barmitsa model, and the vehicle crew takes the expected skin from the UN folder. RED: Set to OPFOR. Also uses the Russian_barmitsa model, so the vehicle crew defaults to the skin chosen for BLUE, which is blue-helmeted United Nations. GREEN: Set to CN. Uses the interceptordress model, but since BLUE is not interceptordress, the crew takes the default interceptordress skin, which is U.S. Army ACUs. PURPLE: Set to DK. Uses the GermanFLAK_ZUKUNFT model, but since BLUE is not GermanFLAK_ZUKUNFT, the crew searches for and borrows the default GermanFLAK_ZUKUNFT skin, which is German flecktarn. BROWN: Set to IL. Uses the new Uniform1970US model. But since BLUE is not Uniform1970US, the crew takes the default Uniform1970US skin, which is Vietnam-era American G.I. GOLD: Set to NZ. Uses the US_MOLLE model, but since BLUE is not using US_MOLLE, the New Zealand crew dons the default US_MOLLE skin, which is Spain -- from the root woodland folder -- which supercedes the U.S. woodland skin from the camo/default folder. ORANGE. Set to KP. Uses Uniform1970RU, but since BLUE is Russian_barmitsa, the North Korean crew dresses in the default Uniform1970RU, whick is Soviet motorized infantry. Note all crews draw the African face of BLUE. (!!!) An especially jarring sight in the case of our North Korean crew. I thought maybe all of this was because I failed to press "apply to existing units" when changing nationalities for the parties in the mission editor (I had only pressed "apply") but that didn't solve the issue. This all takes place in the mission editor at runtime -- after pressing "Start". I didn't try running the mission outside of the editor. Devs? Maybe it's a caching thing. I've attached the mission I used. Load it up and see if what you see matches my description. The anomolies persisted for me even after a computer reboot. If you think this is not important, I'd suggest that while deciding whether to fire on an approaching Pinzgauer loaded with "Blue Helmets" or soldiers in your own uniform is certainly a valuable lesson to teach, it might not be the lesson the instructor built the mission to focus on. This just gets in the way. Sorry this became such a book. I got kind of obsessed with it. crewtest.7z

Blue seems to be the only side where vehicle crewmen dependably take the skin of their assigned nationality. With Green, Brown, Purple, etc,, even if the correct skin appears when viewing the 3D world in the mission editor, when it comes to runtime the crewmen take on apparently a default skin -- and NOT the one in their respective game folders. Example shown below, Green is set as Israel. When I start the mission, vehicle and troop skins appeared as Israeli ... but the vehicle crewmen, as shown, were Yanks. (Tank crewmen in this case turned up in black coveralls, rather than the green that is in the IL folder.) I then set up a Purple side as Danish 2000 ... but a German was driving the apc. Brown side I placed an Aussie M88 but a Brit crewman was in the hatch. Etc. etc. On the Blue side, everything seems to be working always properly. I found this on a desert themed map and a woodland themed one while testing in the mission editor. So maybe I'm missing something. How do I get my non-Blue armies to use their own troops for vehicle crewmen?

I noticed with 4.0 that the operations files have been moved to the ProgramData directory. Files installed to Program Files and ProgramData are generally not intended to be monkey'd with ... but the .sce files are all there if you want to have a go at them. Maybe copy them all to your My Operations folder and tear into the copies there.

If you mean "McDonald's", I suppose it looks a bit like the golden arches at that distance and resolution. Squint harder TM. This skin was uploaded a few days ago, by the way. Still pending approval.

I'm ready to turn loose of these. Sean, do you think we could get a download subcategory for the Mi-8?